This is the quick summary that I hope Google finds for the next sorry frontender being driven to drink trying to make MSIE work like a real browser.

MSIE originally thought only <a> links should respond to :hover. Beginning with MSIE 7, MS decided to respond to :hover with all elements, but only if you used a doctype (sensibly enough) and only if the doctype specified "XHTML" (the inmates had taken over the assylum).

If you used XHTML anyway, this is one more reason to be glad you did. If you thought XHTML was a dead end and stuck with HTML, try my Quirks to Transitional tool. Although originally designed to go from no doctype to HTML, it should do just as well going from HTML to XHTML. It least it will make all your sensible <br> tags into silly <br /> tags, if you ask it nicely.

Feedback: MartinRinehart at gmail dot com

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